Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition Review -
Introduction

Gigabyte is releasing several GeForce GTX 1080 models, yet the flagship graphics card from from that GeForce GTX 1080 Ti just arrived in our labs for testing! It is the sweet Gigabyte Aorus GTX 1080 Ti Xtreme 11G. This GeForce GTX 1080 Ti comes all customized with an impressive PCB and component design, Windforce 3X cooler, RGB LEDs, extra on-board HDMI connectors and the looks to impress. Yes, in this article we'll look at the fastest graphics card your money can get you, the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti based on Pascal architecture. Armed with 11GB of GDDR5X graphics memory and an all new GP102-350 GPU, we are certainly we're gonna break some records today. It has been eight months since Nvidia released the first GP102 based product, the Titan X. To date, a hugely impressive graphics card that will resemble what we review today and very similar on a lot of levels. Really, the 1080 Ti is the Titan X, just with one GB of that GDDR5X memory less and the one ROP partition tied to it. So let me break it down swift and fast, the new high-end GTX 1080 Ti features 3584 CUDA Cores, 224 Texture Units, a 352-bit memory controller and 11 GB of faster (11 Gbps) GDDR5X memory. The card has the same "GP102" GPU as the TITAN X Pascal, but the GTX 1080 Ti was slightly reconfigured. Most interesting is the 352-bit wide GDDR5X memory interface, this was not expected. This translates to 11 memory chips on the card which run at 11 GHz (GDDR5X-effective), the memory bandwidth is 484 GB/s. This invokes the change in ROP count to 88 (from 96 on the TITAN X Pascal), and the TMU count of 224. The Pascal based unit is a bit of a beast alright, the GPU die size is 471 sq mm. If you look at the wider product stack, then a GeForce GTX 1080 has 2,560 shader processors, the GeForce GTX 1070 has 1,920 shader processors, the GeForce GTX 1060 has 1,280 of them. The Nvidia GeForce 1080 Ti has 3,584 shader processors active inside that GP102 GPU, I say active here deliberately as it still isn't even a fully enabled GPU. This means it is has 28 SMs active (28 streaming multi-processors x 128 shader cores (2x64). The cards will be equipped with fast GDDR5X memory as well for this 11 GB model. That memory is tied to a 352-bit wide bus locked in at 11 GHz (GDDR5X-effective). The combination of that memory type and clock frequency gives the 1080 Ti an effective memory bandwidth of 484 GB/s. Gigabyte once again is back in the house to offer you the a very silent product with the usual looks to go with it of course. They offer three primary air cooling based SKUs:

GTX1080 Ti Gaming OC 11G

AORUS 1080 Ti 11G

AORUS 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition 11G

Gigabyte recently their new AORUS branding. Basically you can look at AORUS as Gigabyte’s new premium brand much to what ROG is for ASUS. That means improvements on all design fronts and as such you will see a product today that has been overhauled and designed all custom with 12+2 power phases, a serious WindForce 3X 100mm fan cooling system, higher factory tweaked clock speeds, an RGB LED enabled back-plate and sure, configurable RGB LED lit activities up top and at the frontside. It is all rather impressive as this Pascal 102 GPU empowered product keeps that unit at or just under the 70 Degrees C marker depending on game load. It is also very inspiring to see that Gigabyte now also invokes a 4 year warranty program (you need to register the product on their Aorus website), that is something really special to see these days.

For the AORUS 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition it is also interesting to see that the card has many display connectors. You will stumble into three DP, then three HDMI connectors and then one DVI connector, yet that's seven monitor connectors! An extra HDMI connector is located at the backside of the card for VR related matters. We test this AORUS 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition 11G with with default clocks straight out of the box these will be:

Base clock: 1607 MHz

Turbo clock: 1721 MHz

Memory clock: 11232 Mhz (effective data-rate)

The AORUS 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition will be powered by two 8-pin power connectors. it will also receive extra power limiter allowance (150%) meaning you can drive the card upwards to a 375 Watt board wide power usage and thus squeeze some more performance out of it. We'll test that out in the tweaking segment of this review. Thanks to an intricate design the DVI ports is still there as well, something the reference (FE) cards or cards with blower style coolers do not have. DVI is still in demand by many. If you combine the specs you will get a bit dizzy I guess, but considering we'll be looking at the product from a gaming point of view, I can say this card will run awesome in the Ultra HD domain with titles like GTA-V, Resident Evil 7, Battlefield 1, The Division and many other hip 'n trendy game titles. We'll also look at Gears of War 4, Dishonored 2, Doom, Watch Dogs 2 and Sniper Elite 4. The AORUS 1080 Ti Xtreme Edition cooler is intensified by a series of programmable LEDs, shining through the cover in the Aorus logo, controllable with RGB Fusion. At the backside you'll spot a nice matte black back-plate with a massive copper slab slash GPU block. Anyway, let's get this review started, we have a lot to talk about alright.

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